travel

Castles were the theme of our weekend in Germany, and my favourite castle was Burg Cochem. A beautiful drive through rolling German hills culminated in a lovely little town on the banks of the Moselle River.

Up on the hill was a perfect little castle, surrounded by vineyards.

After climbing up the windy hill, we were ushered through a gate into an idyllic courtyard to join the guided tour through the castle.

Our guide was a seemingly non-nonsense German lady who secretly had a hilariously dry sense of humour.

We just finished up a delightful and fun-filled week and a half with Tony’s parents, aka Grammy and Pampa. The original plan had been to do an epic road tour through central Germany along the castle road to Prague, and then driving all the way back home through Germany. That plan was eventually scrapped, both because it involved too much driving (an average of at least 3-4 hours per day) and because we were in the middle of house hunting and didn’t feel like we could be gone for a week and a half.

Yes, I know it’s February. January turned out to be a bit of a crazy month, mostly because one or another of us has been sick since we got home from Spain. So here’s the long-awaited post on what we did in Sevilla on our last day in Spain.

First of all, we drove. It’s three hours from where we were staying in little Béznar to Sevilla, the longest stretch we drove during our vacation. We don’t mind driving (kind of look back on it nostalgically when we remember our time living on the West Coast), and our kids are great travelers. But poor Axa had a bit of a sensitive stomach during this whole trip, and we did end up taking at least one puke break on the way. Unfortunately, she felt no better once we arrived. So after another puke session on the doorstep of the Starbucks across the street from the Sevilla Cathedral, Tony convinced our hotel to let us check in early, and put Axa to bed, where she promptly fell asleep.

It just so happened that two other families from the children’s school were also vacationing in Spain this year. For Christmas Eve, they invited us to come spend the evening in the cute little house where they were staying. The road to their house was auspiciously announced by this sign, which proclaimed it, ‘Land of Luck’.

We certainly thought we were lucky to be spending Christmas Eve with the Ords and the Bardsleys. The children disappeared immediately to go exploring together in the little canyon right outside the door, while the adults made sangria and Christmas Eve Chili.

One of the disadvantages of planning as you go when it comes to travel is that the logistics don’t always end up being quite as convenient as they might have been. When I booked our cute little house near Granada, the only thing we had planned to do for sure was to visit the Alhambra. From which point of view, renting a house a half hour away made all kinds of sense. However, when you zoom out on Andalucía, you notice that Granada isn’t exactly centrally located. Córdoba, for instance, is three hours away by car. Fortunately, we like road-tripping as much as other forms of travel. The rest of the family humoured me by getting out the door pretty early for a vacation. We arrived in Córdoba around eleven, at least once we had made a few wrong turns and parked our car.

The way we ended up planning our trip was to alternate days of heavy sightseeing with more relaxing days. On one of those relaxing days involving lazy mornings and naps, we decided to take an afternoon hike in the Sierra Nevada National Park, just a few kilometres from where we were staying. A few days earlier, while on our ill-fated puke drive, I had seen a sign that said it was 19 kilometres to the Sierra Nevada National Park. I assumed that meant there would be an official entrance where we could park, and then some well-marked hiking trails and picnic areas. But I guess it was just marking off the distance until the nearest border of what is quite a large national park.

You may be surprised to hear that our trip to Spain was virtually unplanned. We bought our plane tickets and booked our house, but other than that the only thing we did was book our tickets to the Alhambra in Granada. The Alhambra is on every list of must-do’s in Spain. It’s perhaps the most well-known remnant of al-Andalus, the name given to Spain during its over 700 years as a Muslim civilization. Tickets to the Alhambra tend to sell out, so I made sure to get ours early. It just so happened that some Amsterdam friends from our children’s school were also in Spain for the holidays, and had booked their Alhambra tickets on the Monday before Christmas as well. I’d like to think that my kids would have enjoyed seeing the Alhambra anyway, but having their friends there was a definite bonus.

No, the title is not a fancy Spanish term for something else. We literally ended up calling this particular (low) part in our vacation “the puke drive.” Sunday morning we did not wake up in the best of spirits. There are moments like these on every vacation, I suppose; moments in which things just don’t go well. In our case, the moment managed to last all day.

It started out with morning coffee. Tony and I are accustomed to going to coffee on weekend mornings in Amsterdam. In fact, our favourite dates tend to be these coffee mornings, where we can just relax, connect, and enjoy one another’s company. And it doesn’t hurt that Amsterdam is so packed to bursting with wonderful cafés that even though we have tried dozens, there are still dozens, if not hundreds, left to try.

The next day was forecasted to be the hottest of our vacation, so we determined to spend it at the beach. However, I couldn’t resist also planning in some sightseeing. We decided to drive down the coast to Málaga, one of Andalucía’s major cities, and a well-known beach resort. When I read that the Alcazaba (Moorish fort) there was the only parallel to the Krak des Chevaliers in Syria, I knew we had to visit it.

We parked in an underground parking lot near the Alcazaba and managed to walk all the way round it and up and down several staircases before finally finding the entrance, which rises just behind a tumbledown Roman theatre. In fact, the builders of the Alcazaba (or perhaps subsequent restorers) were not especially particular about coherence of style, and happily incorporated a random Roman pillar here and there in the Alcazaba. Before we entered the Alcazaba, Axa and Tony did a deeply moving tragic sketch in front of the theatre.

Back when we were first planning our Christmas trip to Spain, Tony and I had differing ideas about what the best sort of vacation would be. I advocated taking the entire three weeks the children would be off school (plus weekends on either end) and planning a grand extravaganza road trip through the entire Iberian Peninsula. Tony’s ideal vacation is more soaking up the sun on the beach for a week. So we compromised. Rather than booking a new hotel in a new city every day or two and spending the entire trip on the road, we found a darling little house in the Lecrín valley, between Granada (home of the Alhambra, my top must-see in Spain) and the coast. This was to be our home base for the next nine days.

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About Me

We've lived in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America so far, and we're still not sure where we want to settle down yet. We like eating cheese, reading books, and seeing the world. Current adventure: Amsterdam!I blog about homeschooling, expat living, and our roller coaster journey to Italian citizenship.